The Lesser-Known Side of Harris’s Identity: Asian American

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States, Women on 2024-08-01 01:41Z by Steven

The Lesser-Known Side of Harris’s Identity: Asian American

The New York Times
2024-07-28

Amy Qin

Kamala Harris spoke during the virtual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Unity Summit in 2021. Erin Scott for The New York Times

Some Asian American leaders are rooting for Kamala Harris to become the first Asian American president. But she is not widely known as Asian American, reflecting the complexity of the identity.

Daniel Chiang can remember one Asian American who ran for president in 2020: Andrew Yang, a Taiwanese American entrepreneur. But he was surprised to learn last week that there was another person running for president then, and in 2024, who counted herself an Asian American: Kamala Harris.

“I never got that impression,” said Mr. Chiang, 38, a Taiwanese American from Connecticut.

Ms. Harris, the vice president and likely Democratic nominee for president, is known widely as the first Black woman to be elected vice president.

But Ms. Harris, whose mother emigrated from India and whose father emigrated from Jamaica, is less known as an Indian American and Asian American. Asked to name a famous Asian American, only 2 percent of Americans said Kamala Harris, according to a recent survey by The Asian American Foundation…

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